At Sierra Pacific Resources, we are working hard to take every step we can to ensure that the lights stay on in Nevada and northern California. Find out about the issues that face the energy industry in Nevada and how they affect you. Visit the links provided to find more information about the topic you're interested in.

Sierra Pacific Resources and its subsidiaries (Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power) has a three-part strategy to meet the energy needs of Nevada:

1. Increasing our energy efficiency and conservation programs to provide our customers with tools to lower their bills while improving the environment;
2. Expanding renewable energy initiatives and investments that have already made us a national leader;
3. Building new generating plants that will use the best available technology to improve the environment while balancing the mix of fuels used to produce electricity.

All three of these are integral to our goal of providing clean, safe, reliable electricity to our customers at reasonable and predictable prices. They work in tandem in that none individually can achieve this goal.

Some background information is necessary to explain why each component of our strategy is critical.

For many years, our company and our state decided that it was better to buy electricity from power plants owned by others than to build power plants in Nevada to meet the growth in customers and electrical demand. This strategy worked as long as the energy markets were stable, which they were for many years. However, because of changes to rules and regulations that led to the so-called Western Energy Crisis earlier this decade, our customers and our shareholders suffered when the price of power reached unprecedented highs and electricity was in short supply.

Our strategy since 2003 has been to increase our ownership of power to avoid price spikes and reliability problems. As a result of this strategy, in 2006 we added 1800 MW of efficient natural gas facilities and by summer of 2008, we expect to bring that total to about 2,800 MW. The end result is that we will have more than doubled the amount of generating capacity owned by our company.

However, because of our growth and our deficit position prior to 2003, we still will not own enough to meet our customers' needs and we will still depend on the market to supply some of our electricity, especially in the summer. Our desire is to continue to increase our self-sufficiency. In addition to building new, modern power plants, we will expand our programs to reduce our customers' use of electricity and increase use of renewable energy.

Read about our three-part strategy to meet the energy needs of Nevada.